Time for another one of our in theory regular but in practice highly irregular comparisons of the last week’s top ten best-selling PC games on Steam, and at UK retail. Obviously there are all manner of ways in which these are not fair or entirely meaningful comparisons, not least in that Steam’s metrics can tend towards the cryptic, that Steam’s includes pre-orders but UK retail (via Chart-Track) doesn’t and that it’s laughably hard to find many PC games on British high streets these days, but it’s always fun/horrifying to get a flavour for the stark differences between what people are buying digitally and what plastic boxes their attention is caught by.

Well, being mysteriously withdrawn from direct sale on Steam in the UK hasn’t done Space Marine too much harm, eh? Placing number one at UK retail probably hasn’t done the various conspiracy theories about why Space Marine was withdrawn from direct sale on Steam in the UK any harm either. VERY INTERESTING. As is DOW2 Retribution popping back in at 10 there.

Meantime, the Steam chart deftly reveals the efficacy of Steam sales – hello Star Wars and Civ V – but also, with RO2, Magic and Mount and Blade, the greater breadth of the audience compared to the Sims-dominated retail chart. Good work Dead Island though – in both charts, it’s holding its own against some very big boys indeed.

It’s all the people buying Football Manager 2011 I feel sorry for. Don’t they know a new one’s on its way already?

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I’ve been confused about this for some time, as while I very, very rarely bother with popping into GAME for a purchase, I still often order from Amazon or Play if they have a title for a good price. I was under the impression that this is still common for a lot of people, yet often when people talk about “retail” they seem to mean only brick-and-mortar, which is wildly behind the times.

It’s probably because there aren’t really that many games like Red Orchestra 2. Sure, it’s an extremely buggy game at the moment but the developers seem adamant on fixing the game and the core gameplay is very different from everything else out there currently.

Closest I guess you can come is America’s Army, but it’s far better than that even in it’s buggy state.

DOW2 retribution is probably on because, presuming they’re included in that chart, it has seen a sudden massive reduction in prices by online retailers. One site started offering for £8 so Amazon followed and did the same.

I always feel the comparison between these two charts especially falls down because of their respective time frames – that UK retail chart is done weekly, I believe, while the Steam chart is almost an hourly thing.

I think the high Steam placement for Space Marine is because it is activated on Steam regardless of whether it was bought in retail or bought on Steam, and I believe that those activations count toward the sales tracker.